


An Eye, a Leg, and Friendship Crowns

by harl0twith4balloon (i_am_op)



Category: The Witch's House
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, Redemption, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27535381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_op/pseuds/harl0twith4balloon
Summary: The first time it happens, Viola thinks it was like a dream she had, despite being conscious and awake.A horrible dream that had engulfed her and dragged her to the depths of hell, as she was haunted by the chilling memories and lingering nightmares of crawling so desperately, blind to the world around her, and most horribly, betrayed by someone she had called her best friend.
Relationships: Ellen & Viola (The Witch's House)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	An Eye, a Leg, and Friendship Crowns

The first time it happens, Viola thinks it was like a dream she had, despite being conscious and awake. 

A horrible dream that had engulfed her and dragged her to the depths of hell, as she was haunted by the chilling memories and lingering nightmares of crawling so desperately, blind to the world around her, and most horribly, betrayed by someone she had called her best friend. 

Viola looks at Ellen, who looks at Viola expectantly after asking her if they could trade bodies and she looks so eager, so hopeful that Viola feels guilty, for thinking up of a dream so vividly real and so vividly horrible with Ellen as the antagonist of it all, when Ellen had been caged inside her house, in pain everyday, bound to her bed unlike Ellen was. 

So when Ellen asks to trade bodies for a day, she does so willingly and with complete trust. That is where the dream was wrong because Ellen was a sweet girl and a wonderful friend, and Viola gives her one day because she wants to, not out of pity or guilt. 

Viola is wrong though, because as soon as they switch, Ellen laughs as she runs in her new body and Viola cannot see, she cannot run, but she cannot scream either. She can only wither in pain and barely choke out groans. Without even looking at herself, Viola knows that she is the monster her father had killed in her dream, the very same monster that she dreamed of becoming. 

History repeats and the last thing Viola sees is a barrel of a gun as she is brought to her death.

* * *

The second time, she rejects Ellen's request instantly. 

She watches as Ellen's hopeful face crumples into one of hurt, then morphing into a disgusted sneer before scrunching up and before Ellen can do anything, the floorboard creaks and hands pop out, clutching as her ankles. 

Viola screams as she attempts to pry her foot away from the hand but more bleed out, slipping through the cracks and holes before eventually, all of her body is covered by hands. 

The last thing she sees is Ellen's face, full of contempt and disinterest as she is engulfed by the multitude of hands and there is only darkness for her.

* * *

The third time, Viola attempts to plead with her.

When Ellen asks her to trade bodies, Viola gets on her knees and cries so heart wrenchingly, pleading with someone she had once considered the closest friend she's ever had. 

"Please, Ellen. Please, don't ask me such a thing when you're going to lie about it. Are we not friends? Do you not care for me at all?" Viola sobs into her hands and her whole body shakes with each sniffle. 

There is silence and Ellen does not respond. Viola raises her head to see Ellen look at her with the same look of disinterest she had given her last time.

"We are friends, Viola," Ellen says and Viola almost feels the spark of hope, of maybe there being a possibility that she could escape this and her and Ellen could just go back to being friends, but it's snuffed out easily when Ellen tilts her head, her hair strands falling over her face and she continues her words. "And since we're friends, you should share. What's yours is mine. So please, give me your body for a day, _friend_."

Viola had never known that a word as wonderful as "friend" was, could sound so horrible and grating. 

The sense of hopelessness takes over Viola and she falls onto her knees.

"Please. _Please_. _Please_ ," Viola screams, her voice getting progressively louder as she dug her fingers into the floorboards.

Ellen laughs, humorlessly and sardonically. "If you're not going to, then you are no friend of mine. Just die, then."

And there's heavy footsteps coming from behind her and Viola wonders if Ellen even considered her a friend, but her thoughts are interrupted when Violasees red, which she thinks might be her own blood, and then sees black. 

* * *

The fourth time, she tries it once again. She fails though because it is the exact same as her last, except she dies differently, a bit more painfully as she lives for seconds longer to truly see the detachment that Ellen held, despite Viola being killed in front of her.

* * *

The fifth time, she is more aggressive. She tells her no and attempts to leave the house. She opens the door and the same teddy bear she despised is there, waiting for her. 

She could hear Ellen laughing at her, laughing at her misery, when she died. 

* * *

The sixth time, she tries to kill her.

She manages to surprise Ellen, as she surprises her, pouncing on her and then attempting to choke her.

Ellen is unable to physically fight back and can only struggle weakly with Viola's grasp, but the house protects Ellen as if it were an extension of her. It kills Viola before she can kill Ellen. 

She is unsuccessful.

* * *

The tenth time, she manages to strike Ellen down and is close to killing her. 

The damned teddy bear is there though, and kills Viola.

* * *

She commits suicide on her fifteenth time. 

When she opens her eyes as Ellen asks the question, before she had time to react, Viola runs towards the window, punching it as hard as possible over and over again, with Ellen screaming behind her, until the flimsy thing glass shattered from her punch, covering her hands in blood.

"What are you doing?" Ellen cries out towards her, but Viola does not pay any attention to it.

There is pain in her hands, but it feels as if there was no injury to Viola as she jumps out quickly. 

"Viola--" She hears from behind her, a panic-stricken voice, and Viola almost wants to laugh at Ellen, for Ellen has always laughed at every one of Viola's deaths that she's caused and finally, this is one that was out of her control. This was a death that Viola had caused.

She laughs. 

She dies not because of the damned house and Ellen this time, and out of her own will and her own choices.

When she falls to the ground though, she still ends up before Ellen, with her asking the request that she has come to hate. 

Viola screams and screams and attempts to kill Ellen again.

* * *

On her thirtieth try, she finally gets a chance to kill Ellen. 

She's tried every method and the closest Viola's ever gotten to kill her was through a mirror shard. 

Ellen asks her the same question that grates Viola's nerves and Viola pretends to be considering the question as she paces around towards the mirror that lays next to Ellen's bed. 

She smashes the mirror, the mirror shattering into pieces and Viola grabs a pointy shard, the ridges of it digging into her skin and making her bleed, but it does not matter. She jumps towards Ellen and Ellen can't escape it, can't because she's bound to a bed that she cannot move from, and Viola raises the shard upwards, getting ready to kill her.

Ellen looks at her with a look of surprise before morphing into one of absolute hate and fury as she looks as if she wanted to kill Viola over and over and really, she has. She just doesn't remember it. 

"You've betrayed me, Viola. You were never truly a friend of mine, only a foe," Ellen jeers at her and Viola shakes her head.

"No, I wasn't the one to betray you. You were, you killed me over, multiple times, torturing me no matter how much I said no," Viola screams. "I hate you."

And she as she brought down the glass shard, her arm halted her movements. She couldn't move, she could only hover her arm over Ellen, holding the glass shard with such intensity that she was making a bigger gash on her hands. 

_You could ask father to mend it for you. You can patch it all up and everything will be fine. You just need to kill her_ , A small part of her mind whispers in her ear, and it's all so tempting and Viola wants nothing more than to wedge this glass shard in Ellen's throat, but she cannot. 

No matter how many times Ellen has killed her, as made her suffer, she cannot kill her. 

Viola thinks that she is pathetic, for Ellen has only brought her pain and misery, but Viola was too weak-hearted to truly kill her. She still thought Ellen was her friend, despite all her deaths, all her humiliation and betrayal. _Stupid_ , Viola called herself, but looking at Ellen's own look of hate and spite, she could only feel as if she were betraying a trust, a trust that Ellen did not even have, but expected from her. 

"Can you not kill me, _friend_?" Ellen bites out, friend sounding like acid pouring through her lips. "Or should I say foe."

"I cannot, because I am your friend," Viola whispers. 

And she drives the glass shard into her own body instead of Ellen's, just to stop seeing that despising look on Ellen's face.

* * *

"Hey, Ellen," Viola tells her, staring at Ellen in the eyes.

Ellen pauses for awhile before she manages to slip into her usual composure as she smoothens the wrinkles off of her dress. "Yes, my friend?"

"Do you even see me as a friend?"

For a second, Ellen looks taken aback as she flinches slightly and while she looks at Viola with her same composed face, Viola could tell that Ellen was distraught, something she easily picked up after observing Ellen for a long time when she had thought them to be friends.

"Of course, I do. Why would you ask such a question?"

"Friends don't make their friends miserable. Friends don't steal from their friends, they don't lie, they don't-- they don't--" And Viola breaks down crying, clutching the strands of her hair as she shudders and hugs herself. She wants to run away, she wants to end it all, she wants to leave and go back to her father. 

Ellen says nothing. Even when Viola raises her head, she says nothing, she only watched, not looking dethatched, but not attached either, just merely looking. 

Viola hangs her head.

"Okay."

"For what?" Ellen asks her, finally. 

"I'll give you my body. I'm going to trust you because even if you are not my friend, _I_ am your friend. I will trust you," Viola says, looking at Ellen with sad eyes. 

Ellen says nothing. She does not look at Viola with the same hate she had looked at her, time loops ago, but she does not look ecstatic as she did when Viola first allowed her to take over her body. 

When Viola switches, she is not mute, blind, nor lame. She is locked inside this house of Ellen's, but she is still untouched and Viola is hopeful. She is excited because Ellen had left her body intact, had given her the ability to see, to talk, to walk, albeit Ellen couldn't even with them, but it still meant that Ellen had spared her.

Perhaps she could keep her promise and they would take turns, alternate between Viola's body and they would both get the freedom, Viola dreamed, smiling to herself. 

The day passes though and Viola does not switch back. 

She is stuck in this body of Ellen's and she bangs against the house, but the house which protected Ellen now traps her, not killing her, but not letting her escape either. Viola screams herself hoarse to let her out, but when she realizes that Ellen had not planned on giving her back her body, she kills herself. 

* * *

Viola wakes up and she is not before Ellen, but before her father. 

She cannot speak, she can only look on with wide eyes and an open mouth as she cannot process anything. She had expected the see the same sly smile of Ellen's as she asked the questions with a coy face, not the face of her father's warm one. 

"I'm going to go hunting today. Have fun going to Ellen's," He tells her, as he lands a kiss on her face, smiling happily towards her as he runs his hand through her hair. 

"F-Father?" Viola sputters.

Her father pauses and scrunches his features. "What's wrong Viola, why do you look so taken aback? Is something the ma--"

And Viola runs towards him, engulfing him in a hug, tightly grasping around him, unwilling to let go.

"Oh, Viola," Her father sighs, having an exasperated smile. "You still are such a little girl, aren't you."

* * *

"You let her go quite easily. I thought you wanted to have her body, that you'd do anything for freedom and a chance to get out of this house." The black cat licks itself as it perches itself on Ellen's wheel chair. 

"I did. I'm sure my future-self let Viola go through time for a reason," Ellen simply says.

The cat looks at her, preening. "Oh? So you remember all the loops now, do you?"

"Have you always known?"

"Yes. It was getting quite grating to end up in the same spot no matter what I did. She went through quite a lot of them."

"She did. Viola is..." Ellen trails off. She looks at the bundle of flowers that Viola had brought over. She brought it over every single day, up until they had switched bodies because Ellen herself couldn't pick flowers, so Viola had always done that for her. Ellen had always crumpled them up as it felt like Viola was taunting her, pitying her for being unable to go outside and pick flowers like Viola could. But now, Ellen pushes her wheelchair towards the flowers and looks at them, considering. 

"A friend. She is my friend. A good one." Ellen reaches out to the flowers and holds them to her chest as she closes her eyes. "And I am a bad one."

"I chased the end of my loneliness away and now I am truly alone. I am a mere fool," Ellen says as her head leans back into her chair.

The cat merely purrs. "Too bad."

Ellen chuckles. "Too bad indeed."

A knock on the door. 

Ellen raised her eyes at the cat, but the cat merely tilted its head. "Do not ask me, I do not know. Perhaps a wandering traveler accidentally got lost in these parts. Perhaps its a new body to take hostage of."

Ignoring the cat, Ellen struggled in wheeling herself to the door, her hands weak and weightless compared to the wheels, but when she finally brought herself towards the door, it swung open and there was no one there.

"What a waste of--"

Flowers.

A bundle of flowers that Ellen had liked the most. 

"She is a fool too," Ellen says, laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> does anyone even remember witch's house lmAO, i just watched an old ass playthrough today and i just got randomly inspired. even if this fic gets 0 views, wanted to get this out.


End file.
